OVERNIGHT. Jazz.

Ensemble Carries On Gillespie's Vision United Nation Is Still Exploring

June 25, 1993|By Howard Reich, Arts critic.

In the last years of his life, Dizzy Gillespie said that the music of the future might be a rambunctious merging of musical traditions from around the world.

Nowhere is that prophecy more vividly realized than in the work of the United Nation Big Band, a viscerally exciting ensemble that opened Thursday night at the Jazz Showcase.

Though the personnel of this group has changed over time, essentially, this is the band that Gillespie founded and led in his final years. In almost every way-stylistically, aesthetically, philosophically-the band epitomizes major themes in Gillespie's work.

For one, it obliterates the myth of a single genre of "Latin jazz," consistently exploring the subtle but crucial distinctions among the sounds of Cuba, Argentina, Brazil and so on. By mixing these indigenous musics with the melodic and harmonic currents of American jazz, the band on Thursday night reaffirmed the virtually limitless musical possibilities of Gillespie's cross-cultural experiments.

Led by alto saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, the group quickly established its links to both Gillespie and the legendary Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, co-authors of "Tin Tin Deo." The crispness of the ensemble sound, the clarity of the instrumental counterpoint, the precision of the multiple rhythmic lines suggested that this was "Tin Tin Deo" as Gillespie would have preferred to hear it.

So, too, the evening's finale, a thoroughly idiomatic reading of Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia." Buoyed by D'Rivera's meticulously constructed solos, which often hinted at the main theme without spelling it out, this performance proved that only particular melodic accents and subtle rhythmic liberties make the piece sound authentic.

Even beyond the Gillespie canon, however, the United Nation Big Band proved convincing. "Blues for Astor Piazzolla," written by band trumpeter/fluegelhornist Diego Urcola, dared to mix tango dance rhythms with be-bop and blue melodic lines.

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The United Nation Big Band plays through Sunday at the Jazz Showcase in the Blackstone Hotel, 636 S. Michigan Ave. Phone 312-427-4846.